by Tara Winkler
But I resisted, knowing I was already up to my eyeballs in commitment. And the pups were way too young to be taken from their mother anyway. So I pushed aside all thoughts of adopting a dog, smiled at the old woman and shook my head.
‘Let’s go,’ I said to the kids, before I had a chance to change my mind. Ponlok scooped up the cakes he’d bought and we continued on down the road.
All thought of the puppies fled my mind in the weeks that followed, because Peter came to visit. It was great to see him. He loved the kids and staff and Chan’s family, too. He said: ‘I feel like I suddenly have fourteen grandkids!’
So it wasn’t till about four weeks later, when Ponlok, Bopha and I were taking the same route to the grocery stalls, that I decided to make a quick stop to see how the puppies were getting on. The old woman was there as usual, sitting on the stone chair.
‘Hello, Grandma,’ I said pressing my hands together politely. ‘How are the puppies?’
‘They are all dead—including the mother dog,’ she informed me. ‘There’s just one left.’ She pointed in the direction of some big cement pots. The sole survivor was cowering behind them. I reached around and picked her up.
‘All of them? What happened?’ I asked.
‘They were all run over by a car,’ the old lady said.
It was rather a strange story, but I didn’t see much point in questioning her further. I put down the struggling orphaned pup, who immediately scampered behind the pots again.
The old lady picked up a stick and whacked the pots repeatedly to scare her out again for me. After three or four good whacks the pup came bolting out and froze, tail between her legs. Then, to my horror, the old lady delivered a final whack directly to the puppy’s behind and cackled gleefully.
In an instant, the terrified pup was in my arms and I couldn’t stop my mouth from saying: ‘Please can I keep the puppy?’ The old lady cheerfully agreed, squeezing my arm affectionately and flashing me a scary smile.
Oh well, I thought. Jedtha was always telling me: ‘Do something good for yourself!’ And for me, there’s almost nothing that brings me as much joy as a puppy.
I took the puppy back to my room at CCT. The kids looked up from what they were doing, said, ‘Oh, Tara’s got a puppy,’ and went about their business. I was relieved that they weren’t interested. They weren’t very nice to animals, I’d found, having never been taught to treat them with any kind of respect.
After the puppy was washed, wormed and tucked into a nice soft bed in the corner of my room, I decided she was actually a pretty cute little thing. She still looked like a hyena, but she was a very cute-looking hyena. And she had big, bright, hazel eyes that begged to be loved. I called her Ruby.
Ruby became my shadow, never letting me out of her sight. She’d pad around behind me while I was on duty at CCT, ride around town with me on my bike, hang out with me at the internet cafes, and sit loyally at my feet through every meeting. Ruby was a great morale booster for me.
We became a familiar sight at the markets, where I’d swing by regularly to pick up ‘chicken tails’ for Ruby’s dinner—a 25-cent stick of chicken meat. One evening, on the way home from running some errands in Chan’s car, I stopped by the bustling Psar Nat market to get Ruby some dinner. It was peak hour and there was nowhere to park, so I pulled up by the stall that sold the chicken tails and sang out over the crowds of people: ‘Sister, can I get some chicken tails?’ The ladies at the stall froze. Then they—and practically the whole marketplace—exploded with laughter.
As soon as the words came out of my mouth I knew I’d made a grievous error. In Khmer, the word for ‘tail’ and the rude slang word for ‘female genitalia’ are almost identical. So what had I just had shouted out across the busy market? ‘Sister, can I get some chicken pussy?’
For weeks after, whenever I pulled up to buy Ruby dinner, the ladies at the barbecued meat stall would cry out: ‘Ah! It’s the chicken pussy girl!’
Over time, Ruby grew glossy on her diet of leftovers and chicken tails. And she grew to love the kids as much as I did. Despite how much they tormented her, she’d yodel with happiness when they got home from school in the afternoons and she was as gentle as could be with them.
In some ways I think Ruby helped crystallise a new feeling that was growing inside me. A feeling that Cambodia was now home.
It wasn’t long before one dog turned into three dogs—Ruby, Rosie and Franky (short for Frankenstein).
The second addition was Rosie. Chan’s next-door neighbours had found her wandering around the market, alone and afraid. They’d heard that I’d taken in one orphaned dog and so thought that perhaps I’d like this one too.
I was hesitant at first, but I couldn’t turn her away and thought it would be nice to have a friend for Ruby.
Rosie is cute as a button—a red ball of fluff who’s very protective of me and almost never lets me out of her sight. Franky was in such a state when I first met him that we named him ‘Frankenstein’. Ironically, he grew up to be a very handsome fellow.
Early one evening at CCT, the kids and I were sitting around the pink stone table in the front yard chatting away waiting for dinner, watching the sky begin to turn pretty colours. The kids were getting very excited about the smell of pork cooking on the hot coals. I told them that back home some people keep pigs as pets.
‘No way!’ they said, cracking up in fits of laughter. ‘That’s so crazy!’
‘I’d like to have a pet pig,’ I told them.
‘Okay, Tara, you can get a pet pig!’ they replied, still laughing.
‘No, I couldn’t do that. I’d come home one day to find you had turned it into pork chops!’ I said.
This quip was greeted with a chorus of laughter. I was stoked. It was my first successful joke in Khmer.
When the laughter died down, cheeky little Amara piped up. ‘You already have a pet pig.’ He paused for effect, then said: ‘Her name is Rosie.’
This caused another round of great hilarity. Rosie was famous for her insatiable appetite. In fact, the kids had nicknamed her Si-Daik, literally ‘eat-sleep’, after her favourite pastimes. Some days she’d sleep in till around midday, until she smelled the scraps from the kids’ lunches hitting the deck and smouldering on the hot slabs of concrete.
I reached underneath the stone bench to give Rosie a comforting pat, but she wasn’t there. Ruby and Franky were still sitting at my feet but Rosie was nowhere in sight. I called. And called again. But she didn’t come.
Finding Rosie had disappeared made that pork chops joke suddenly seem a lot less funny. In Cambodia, a wandering dog could indeed end up on someone’s dinner plate.
We searched every inch of CCT, and then trawled the streets calling her name and asking the neighbours if they’d seen her. When it started to get too dark, I took the kids home and went straight to Chan’s house.
Seeing my distress, Chan and Mina sprang into action.
‘It’s okay, P’oun srey,’ Chan assured me. ‘We can put news you lost Rowsee on Battambang Radio. We can also get tuktuk with big phone to try to find for you.’
I wasn’t sure what exactly he meant by a ‘big phone’, but I was getting more desperate by the minute, and it sounded better than wandering around in the dark on my own.
Chan pulled out his mobile and started talking at such a fast clip I couldn’t follow. Next thing I knew, we were on the way to the local radio station with a message written out in Khmer. It only cost $10 to get an announcement made on the radio. It would be broadcast several times that night and the following day.
When we got back to CCT there was a tuktuk waiting with an enormous, rusty megaphone tied to the front. The ‘big phone’!
What an understatement.
I set off in the tuktuk with Chan, Sinet, Ponlok and the tuktuk’s owner, who doubled as our broadcaster for the evening. We drove all over the neighbourhood, blasting the same message over and over again.
‘Lost dog. Red colour. It has a col
lar with a tag and the owner’s phone number. If you find the dog we will give you a twenty-dollar reward!’
Soon, a dozen or so guys on motos were charging off in all directions to try to find Rosie and earn the reward.
As the hours ticked by, the reward went up and up. By eleven o’clock, it was $50.
Soon it was so late we had to admit defeat and go home. But I couldn’t see how I could sleep. I was already haunted by images of my poor Rosie being killed, skinned and butchered.
‘Don’t cry, P’oun srey,’ Chan said. ‘You give Rowsee a good life.’
The next morning there was still no sign of her. I forced myself to eat a little breakfast, threw a bucket of water over my head and tried to focus on responding to some emails from potential donors. It was hard to concentrate on anything.
Suddenly Mina burst in, shouting breathlessly in Khmer: ‘I think we’ve found Rowsee! Chan is waiting for us.’ My chair fell over backwards as we both raced to the gates and jumped in Chan’s tuktuk.
We pulled up at a small house just a few blocks away. I could hear dogs barking.
A rough-looking Khmer man in his forties led me out the back of his small brick home. Two dogs, both barking wildly, were tied up near the back door. My heart sank. No Rosie.
But then the guy pointed to the back corner of his yard where a hunched, trembling dog crouched. Rosie! She took a few steps towards me as I hurried over and knelt in front of her, but she was sort of tucked over, dragging her back legs. Something was terribly wrong. A broken back? Broken legs? Then I realised she was pissing herself, she was so relieved to see me.
I hated to think what must have happened to her in the hours that she’d been missing. Chan reckoned the guy had planned to sell her and the other dogs there as meat, but the $50 reward was probably more than he would have received for selling off her parts.
I was so overwhelmed with relief that I didn’t spare a single thought for the other dogs left tied up there. Thinking back now, I wish I’d paid for their release too . . .
For months afterwards, strangers would come up and ask if I ever found my red dog. They had never heard of anyone giving a reward for a lost dog, much less driving around at night blasting it from a megaphone.
I look back now at those golden weeks as my ‘honeymoon phase’.
But there was still something that kept me awake at night. Rath had raped Sinet and got away with it. He was still running SKO and there were still kids in his care.
Sinet had made me promise not to tell anyone but it was a hard secret to keep when I knew he was still running an orphanage, still in charge of young girls.
Also, I worried that if we pretended nothing had ever happened, Sinet wouldn’t get the counselling and support that she needed. She was terrified of Rath and came home a trembling, teary mess whenever she saw him or one of his relatives around town. What long-term effect would the trauma have on her?
So one evening, after all the little kids had been put to bed and the older kids were busy doing homework or reading, I sat down next to Sinet.
‘Sinet, we need to talk about what you told me about Rath,’ I said in Khmer. ‘I worry about you.’
Sinet looked confused for a moment and I wondered if I’d used the wrong words.
I pressed on. ‘I think you need to talk to a doctor who can help you feel better.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘Do you understand?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I understand, but I don’t want counselling.’ She was pretty emphatic about it.
I explained to her that I thought it was important for Jedtha and Savenh, our social worker, to know what happened. I reminded her that they also cared about her and, if she didn’t want to see a counsellor, at least she could talk about it with people who spoke Khmer better than me. I also reminded her she had done nothing wrong, that she had nothing to feel ashamed about.
‘So can we tell Jedtha and Savenh?’ I asked.
She nodded. ‘Okay, I don’t mind telling them.’
Jedtha and Savenh were both shocked to learn what had happened to Sinet. Then their shock turned to outrage. They started talking about pressing charges.
We worried that Rath may have hurt other kids as well. So as well as counselling Sinet, Savenh also conducted counselling sessions with the rest of the kids.
Thankfully, after Savenh met with each one of the kids, she reported that while the other kids had suffered violence and neglect at Rath’s hands, none of them reported any sexual assault.
One of SKO’s older girls, Kolab, left SKO before the rescue took place. Kolab was mature for her age, and managed to get into a hairdressing school in Battambang. She hadn’t been able to start school till her pre-teens, and she was bright and keen to get out and start her life, so this seemed like a good fit for her.
Her younger sister Kanya—a sweet, quiet little girl—had come with us to CCT. Kolab would come to visit Kanya occasionally, and after she finished training, she asked if she could come and stay with us, too.
Life in the outside world after leaving the orphanage was tough—Kolab was working full time, but the pay of $40 per month was so meagre she barely had enough to feed herself, let alone cover rent. It had all turned out to be much harder than she thought it would be. But Kolab was almost twenty; coming back to live at CCT’s orphanage wasn’t a step in the right direction.
Still, we couldn’t leave her struggling to get by on $40 a month, sentenced to a life of poverty, while we educated her younger sister. Not only did it seem unfair—and being fair is a pretty big deal, really—but with the better education we were providing Kanya, when she grew up, finished school and got a job, she would probably end up having to provide ongoing support to her older sister, who hadn’t had the same opportunities.
This is how it works in Cambodia—without the welfare safety net we have in the west, almost every working Khmer adult I knew was caring for extended family members. This would keep Kanya from escaping a life of poverty, too.
We eventually managed to get Kolab a place at a beauty school in Phnom Penh where she could board and get more formal qualifications as a hairdresser and beautician. Securing the funds to put Kolab though college wasn’t easy, but eventually we found a donor who was happy to increase their monthly donation to help cover her costs. Jedtha and I hoped we might be able to help Kolab set up a little hairdressing stall at the markets after she graduated so she could support herself. We’d just have to wait and see how she went.
Sinet continued to be a huge help to me in those early days of CCT. I came to really rely on her to navigate the complicated world that is Cambodia. In time, she became my substitute little sister and a very dear friend.
I was so impressed with what a bright, inquisitive and free-thinking young girl she was. For someone who had grown up in such abject, isolating poverty, she was passionately interested in worldly matters. I’d talk to her about science, politics, religion and world history and she’d soak it up like a sponge. She seemed able to see horizons far beyond the scope of her life experience. She was a natural leader and so wonderful with the other kids.
But she was also very fragile. When the subject of Rath came up there’d be lots of tears. She would often say she felt like his actions must have somehow been her fault, that she’d done something to bring it on herself. She said thinking about it made her feel dirty, like she needed to shower and scrub herself clean. I told her constantly: ‘You did nothing wrong! The wrong is all his! He is a disgusting, bad man who did something very illegal. How you feel is normal and understandable. Many other girls in Cambodia, and around the world, have suffered the same. You are a brave, strong girl. Remember that, okay?’
One day, Jedtha and Savenh had a meeting with Sinet at the pink stone table in the yard to talk to her about prosecuting Rath. Jedtha was absolutely convinced that pressing charges was the right thing to do. It was also the only way to stop Rath from hurting anyone else.
‘You hav
e the right to prosecute him,’ he told her. ‘We can take him to court if you want.’
To my great surprise, she said: ‘Yes. We should.’
‘Good! I’m happy to see you being strong,’ Jedtha said. ‘We can go and talk to LICADHO to get their advice.’ LICADHO is the French acronym for the Cambodian League for the Promotion and Defence of Human Rights.
I looked across the yard to where some of our girls were giggling together over a game of jump rope, looking so happy, and so vulnerable.
There was still so much about Cambodia that I didn’t understand. I worried about how we were going to navigate through this situation, while not putting Sinet, ourselves or any of the other kids in harm’s way. But I completely agreed with Jedtha—justice is important and Rath shouldn’t be allowed to get away with what he had done.
We all agreed to give it our best shot.
Knowing the cold hard reality hidden behind some of the kids’ bright happy faces was an ongoing worry for me. They had suffered violence and gross neglect at SKO, and many of the kids had been abused long before they’d fallen into Rath’s hands.
The signs were there, all the time, that terrible things had happened to these kids. A lot of them suffered traumatic nightmares. We sometimes saw inexplicable crying jags, mood swings, angry outbursts and behaviours that seemed obsessive. This was more than just the normal ups and downs of childhood—it was clear to me that we needed to do more to help them.
If the kids felt sad or had problems, the only adult they could really talk to was Savenh, our social worker. She had a lot of field experience and had done some specialised training workshops, but she had no formal training. Social work wasn’t even available to study at any university in Cambodia until 2008. Savenh herself often said she was at a loss as to how best to address these behaviours.
Another issue we had was that the kids tended to come to me, not the staff, with their problems. Sinet, in particular, would only talk to me. They just didn’t trust Savenh and the rest of the staff in the same way. I was painfully aware that I wasn’t qualified to properly help them—I just knew the kids needed to feel safe and secure, and loved. But I didn’t know what to do to make sure they all grew up feeling that way. We needed help, an expert we could call on, something . . .